Government gone wrong

Too many of our leaders dragging our nation down a destructive path

In the process of defeating tyranny on both sides of the planet, the World War II generation also found some time to make America the most powerful, most prosperous nation in history, benefitting more people with more abundance and more freedom than any nation in history.

This was done with a fundamental understanding and implementation of the free enterprise system, and with limited government regulation and interference.

But the current generation of American leaders falls far short of the record and successes of their predecessors. Our current leaders are fostering dependence on government rather than individual initiative and accountability.

Here are some examples:

Federal debt has climbed to nearly $17 trillion – a bill of more than $53,000 per person that we are leaving to our children. And the bill is climbing every second.

Our nation’s annual deficit – the difference between what we take in and what the government spends – has topped $1 trillion for the past four years. The federal government must borrow 42 cents for every dollar it spends.

Astonishingly, in his budget blueprint that is being released two months late, our president – whose financial credibility is so low that his budgets never get even one Democratic vote in Congress – is prescribing taking money instead of cutting spending. He wants to take more money out of the staggering private economy through higher taxes and feeding it to a federal government that is already gorging and yet can’t make ends meet. The president’s budget would continue deficit spending indefinitely.

Food stamp use set a record last year, with nearly 48 million Americans on it at the close of 2012. And the federal government is practically begging more people to sign up.

Meanwhile, the number of Americans working or gamely looking for a job dropped by half a million last month –

leaving the “labor force participation rate” at a low not seen since the malaise days of Jimmy Carter.

And even as 500,000 left the work force, the economy created an anemic 88,000 jobs in March, not even enough to keep pace with population growth.

All this has happened despite the Federal Reserve’s printing more money, and risking hyperinflation, in order to maintain the illusion of a recovery.

Nor is Obamacare likely to help. Employers still don’t completely know how it will affect them, but what they’ve seen so far isn’t good: Insurance premiums are rising and are expected to skyrocket – and punitive portions of the health care law make it quite unpleasant to hire, particularly full-time. And every reputable study shows health care costs will go up for all Americans.

Presidential candidate John McCain in 2008 sounded silly and irrelevant when he claimed the nation’s fundamentals were strong, even as they melted down.

Nearly five years later, the fundamentals may actually be worse.

What happens when Washington has fired all of its magic bullets? What happens when our creditors decide we’re no longer a good risk? What happens when all that Monopoly money they’re printing turns out to be worth less than before, and inflation kicks in and interest rates skyrocket? Note: Interest rates have nowhere else to go but up.

What happens when, as Margaret Thatcher predicted of socialist schemes, we actually do run out of other people’s money – as they already are in Western Europe?

Even the stock market’s recent rally, fueled largely by the money-printing, is a bubble that is sure to burst, writes former Reagan budget director David Stockman, in a March 30 column in The New York Times – titled “State-Wrecked: The Corruption of Capitalism in America” – and his new book, The Great Deformation: The Corruption of Capitalism in America: “The United States is broke – fiscally, morally, intellectually,” he writes.

Not only won’t our leaders tell us these truths, but they’re actively propagating the fiction that all will soon be well if we just stay the course.

We’ve been so busy trying to avoid the least bit of pain – by shifting it ahead to our children and grandchildren – that the lies feel all the better.

The people of this nation had better awaken to what we are doing to it, and fast.

We need a balanced budget. We need a long-term plan to deal with our overwhelming amount of debt. We need term limits in Congress to end the careerism that is corrupting it. For that matter, we also need bureaucrat limits. We need to stop punishing truth-tellers at the ballot box – and return to JFK’s admonition not to ask what our country can do for us.

We need to balance the books in government, before they tip over on all of us.

Mostly, we desperately need a return to the kind of self-reliant, selfless citizenship the Greatest Generation modeled for us, and which we have mindlessly and foolishly shunned.

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Capitalism meet socialism. Nothing is going to work until this confrontation is over. The two systems are going at it like when Muhammad Ali fought the Japanese wrestler. It was an ugly, incongruous match of two forces not meant to be in the ring together. We need a good choke hold and a tap out so we can get back to BUSINESS.

The greatest generation. The very people who would be at your throat if you threatened their Social Security checks or Medicare.

Since the editors love Stockman so much why didn't they run an editorial when he said extending the Bush tax cuts would, "would amount to a bankruptcy filing" and that "unseemly for the Senate minority leader, Mitch McConnell, to insist that the nation’s wealthiest taxpayers be spared even a three-percentage-point rate increase"? How about his statement, "The new catechism, as practiced by Republican policymakers for decades now, has amounted to little more than money printing and deficit finance — vulgar Keynesianism robed in the ideological vestments of the prosperous classes" and it "has not simply made a mockery of traditional party ideals. It has also led to the serial financial bubbles and Wall Street depredations that have crippled our economy. It has also led to the serial financial bubbles and Wall Street depredations that have crippled our economy" and "modern Republicans have turned a blind eye to each one."

is no way to go through life, son
Yet that is the type person this government needs.
Ah, the low information voter.
Indoctrinated into victimhood, sure their natural right to utopia has been stolen by anyone successful.

sounds like the writer of this article would like to turn the clock back 50 years. Reverse civil rights achievements, and stick their heads in the sand again. Perhaps a little more research should have been done before writing this article.

Since Obama has now increased the national debt as much in 4 years as Bush did in 8 why not start thereof! Oh, by the way Bodhizattva Obama has now, officially, said he wants to cot SS &Medicare benefits. Oh never mind Obama was just lying again, no big deal! How is the cutting the deficit in half Obama promised coming? BWAHAHAHAHA

Techfan......" It has also led to the serial financial bubbles and Wall Street depredations that have crippled our economy"

Are you talking about the Democrat's policy of forcing banks to give mortgage loans to people who could not afford them, thereby forcing the banks to come up with SOME way to get all of those government forced BAD loans off of their books. You know, like Obama is trying to do AGAIN.

As for your cut to the Greatest Generation......let me assure you that nobody will EVER say that about you and your generation. The sinkholes in Florida that swallowed the man in his bed are a perfect icon for what the current generation has done to the foundation of a once great nation. Warts and all we were still a great country but the eroded hole is already there.....unseen beneath the concrete slab.....but ready to collapse at any moment while we snooze.

McCarthy (sic) should have pushed harder for a purge of communists in American gubmint, t.v. and hollyweird! pelosi, reid, biden, obama, sanders, rangel, jacksons, aclu and the naacp have thrived. I guess slavery is embedded in certain ethnicities DNA.

Dichotomy -- "Are you talking about the Democrat's policy of forcing banks to give mortgage loans to people who could not afford them, thereby forcing the banks to come up with SOME way to get all of those government forced BAD loans off of their books."
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I'm sure, making a statement like that, that you have ONE SINGLE EXAMPLE of this happening. Out of millions of loans, ONE. SINGLE. EXAMPLE.

I have heard this hypothesis countless times with never a SINGLE shred of evidence that it is true.

Limbaugh had a mortgage banker on his show at one point, who said, repeatedly, that he had ZERO knowledge of this occurring. Limbaugh ignored him. The evidence didn't fit his narrative, so he pretended it didn't exist.

That the government was the primary cause of the financial crisis is a pretty moot point. My goodness. Banks were judged by how many loans were made to minorities. The same minorities who are victims in the government tactic of keeping minorities uneducated.
There are many books.
The Financial Crisis and the Free Market Cure is a good one.
Reckless Endangerment: How Outsized Ambition, Greed, and Corruption Led to Economic Armageddon is another (they're from the NY Times, so are incapable of lying). Thomas Sowell has a good one.
this is disappointing. I had hoped for better.
oh, and since you like Limbaugh so much (surprising) go here... cause what you said isn't truehttp://www.rushlimbaugh.com/daily/2013/01/10/federal_regulators_admit_th...

How? How were they materially affected? What form was this "judgment"? How was the "judgment" enforced?

I'm sure there are many books, with many many hypotheses.

I am talking about A SINGLE. TANGIBLE. POINT OF EVIDENCE.

You're right, it is disappointing. I thought people were better thinkers than that.

I'm sure that in a broad case of gov't forcing MILLIONS of bad loans, you have a SINGLE DOCUMENTED COMPLAINT. A SNGLE LAWSUIT. I can't imagine someone would be gullible enough to swallow such a broad exercise of gov't interference without a SINGLE DOCUMENTED CASE.

To enforce the statute, federal regulatory agencies examine banking institutions for CRA compliance, and take this information into consideration when approving applications for new bank branches or for mergers or acquisitions
any more questions?
and my goodness... calm down

and my goodness... calm down
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Lol, sorry ymndbe, I have just grown so tired with the political talking heads telling bald-faced lies to their audiences, and their audiences not doing a single shred of work to see if those stories are based on anything more than innuendo.

"To enforce the statute, federal regulatory agencies examine banking institutions for CRA compliance, and take this information into consideration when approving applications for new bank branches or for mergers or acquisitions"

Again, I assume you have a SINGLE SHRED OF EVIDENCE of this.

Stop and think about what you are saying. You are claiming that gov't FORCED banks to make FRAUDULENT loans, and bankers just meekly complied? Some of the most powerful lending houses in the country just meekly said "yes sir, I'll make fraudulent loans because you are forcing me to against my will, and I, with billions of dollars of assets and influence, will just go along and not say a word."

How can someone 1) believe such a ridiculous scenario, and 2) hold that belief without a single documented piece of evidence?

I'd gladly believe it, if provided actual evidence. But I can't possibly just accept, on faith, such an incredible scenario without any evidence.

you don't have the prerequisite knowledge to continue... if you would just educate yourself with an actual book, instead of just reading isolated quotes that leave you careening from one position to another... darn... the information is there... get it... you only have shreds of information... but perhaps that is all you want, all you need

Carcaft, I never said that gov't didn't INSURE loans. That's obvious. What is also obvious is that lenders approved fraudulent loans knowing they couldn't lose. I'm not arguing that the bubble wasn't largely created by mortgage insurance. But to claim that bad loans were made by gov't coercion, rather than lenders taking advantage of a guaranteed payout, is absolutely absurd.

Ymndbe, I really have asked for nothing unreasonable. Of MILLIONS of bad loans, and gov't coercion, ONE SINGLE COMPLAINT of malfeasance. That's it. ONE. We can innuendo and conspiracy 'til the cows come home. I'm an empiricist. Show me the evidence.

Burninater Look up Bayruck Robinson vs Citibank. Obama was one of the attorneys involved filing suit using the community reinvestment act. So yes banks were forces to make the loans but why. Care since they were insured!

Carcraft, I greatly appreciate your presence on these forums. We rarely come to the same conclusion, but at least you present your case factually, and don't expect people to believe something for which you've provided no evidence.

I agree, that Citibank case would provide a bank motivation to avoid the appearance of denying loans based on non-financial criteria, in order to avoid lawsuits by customers.

Potential class-action lawsuits by customers, however, is in no sense whatsoever the gov't forcing of loans to unqualified applicants, enforced by denial of branch openings (!), acquisitions, and mergers -- as ymndbe claims, with zero evidence.

The true ECONOMIC pressure for bad loans is that the originaters got paid REGARDLESS of whether the loan was ever repaid. It was the derivatives investors, or the Fannie/Freddie assumptions, that took the real risk -- and by bundling, the risk was masked. Originaters knew that unless outright fraud could be proven in a court of law -- highly unlikely, given the little resouces or will available for investigating and prosecuting financial crimes -- they were making money for every loan they made, regardless of how bad it was.

The case against Countrywide documents this practice, with actual evidence.

Burninater, Thank you! My issue is that the government took tax payers dollars and put them at risk! Obama's buddy Raines walked out of Fannie Mea with a $6,000,000.00 bonus while the floor crumbled underneath it leaving the tax payer holding the bag. I don't know if you remember Chris Dodd got a great loan deal from Country Wide, a company his sub committee regulated. I don't know if you remember that Bush went to Barney Frank and Chris Dodd several times and ask them to put the brakes on Fannie and Freddie. Barney told him. "It ain't broke we aren't fixing it "! Add to that law suits like the one I mentioned and you have a billions of dollars of problems. Red lining was a practice that limited loans to shaky neighbor hoods! Banks were then forced to make loans into areas that were higher risk! This is indeed a financial consideration!

Burninater, the other issue is that Fannie and Freddie never reviewed any of the loans they bundled and had underwritten according to your article! Now this is a failure of government regulators yet what did Obama do? More regulaters and regulations

“Burninater, the other issue is that Fannie and Freddie never reviewed any of the loans they bundled and had underwritten according to your article! Now this is a failure of government regulators yet what did Obama do? More regulaters and regulations”

Bureaucrats are rarely, if ever, “reviewed”. Oh, they claim they're reviewed, but they're reviewed within the guidelines of government.
That's the whole problem with governmental “departments”. They have free rein. The only time there's a problem is when the cacophony becomes so loud, it can't be ignored. Most people just “bear it”. But believe you me, they “bear it” resentfully.

‘Lol, sorry ymndbe, I have just grown so tired with the political talking heads telling bald-faced lies to their audiences, and their audiences not doing a single shred of work to see if those stories are based on anything more than innuendo.’
It seems you being very hard on the supporters of the Marxist/communist in the WH.

I recently moved from Augusta but decided to check back in to see if your editorials still derived conclusions having nothing to do with facts. The generation you mention built an interstate highway system, eradicated polio, eliminated the communist threat, integrated the country and to top it off put a man on the moon. They did this with an austerity program, hands off government and minimal taxes on the well off? I think not! But never let reality slow down your diatribe.